


De Civitate Dei

by tb_ll57



Series: In The Quiet Heart Is Hidden [2]
Category: The Song of the Lioness - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Between Books, Gap Filler, Gen, Sibling Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-26
Updated: 2014-10-26
Packaged: 2018-02-22 15:42:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2513039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tb_ll57/pseuds/tb_ll57
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>True Seers were rarest of all, those who could control a vision, direct it, use it.  Thom of Trebond might be one of those.  Or he might be the one who called on too much power, and never came back from it.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	De Civitate Dei

**Author's Note:**

> My lips smile no more, my heart loses its lightness;  
> No dream of the future my spirit can cheer.  
> I only can brood on the past and its brightness  
> The dear ones I long for again gather here.
> 
> From ev'ry dark nook they press forward to meet me;  
> I lift up my eyes to the broad leafy dome,  
> And others are there, looking downward to greet me  
> The ash grove, the ash grove, again is my home.
> 
> ~The Ash Grove, Welsh folk song

They came running for Si-Cham. By then the matter was urgent; they'd waited for it to run its own course, as it should have done, but when it went wrongly the stretch of frantic fetching added to the delay. Si-Cham was not so young anymore and was not accustomed to moving so quickly. He'd been alone in the Western Outlook, as well, absorbed in mid-day meditation as far as he could get from the untrained and boisterously antic minds of his students. His soft slippers scuffed on endless slate steps as he hurried, chuffing against the growing stitch in his side.

He was met by Instructor Mohr, whose barely restrained panic showed in hands twisting in his orange cowl, jaw locked as he tried to keep a calm expression. 'Master,' he whispered. 'The boy, it's been nearly a full notch of the candle...'

'Children.' Si-Cham clapped his hands, and the novitiates turned in prompt attention. 'Your Instructor tells me you've done especially well today,' he lied smoothly. 'You may have the rest of the hour for free use. Be prompt at supper, please.'

That rid them of one problem. Mohr and his apprentice Pellerin shooed the students away. Si-Cham wiped sweat from his brow on the hem of his sleeve, something his dignity wouldn't permit in front of an audience, for all he was shaky and hot from his rush. He caught the drape at the nearest window, loosing the tie and plunging the classroom into darkness. Pellerin took care of the other window, and then there was only the one lit candle, and the boy Thom of Trebond, still and staring.

Si-Cham approached him slowly. It was an exercise he knew well, one unchanged since long before he'd been a young novitiate here, one that would remain unchanged for centuries more. The most basic form of divination: the calling of fire. For most, it was an exercise in discipline. For some lucky students, a vision would appear. Only a few would develop the skill to call it forth at will. Of those, true Seers were rarest of all, those who could control a vision, direct it, use it.

Thom of Trebond might be one of those. Or he might be the one who called on too much power, and never came back from it.

Si-Cham examined him closely without touching. The boy's eyes were wide, and reddening from strain, though he barely blinked and evidenced no awareness at all. He did not flinch when Si-Cham clapped his hands sharply at his ear; he rocked and steadied uncringing when Si-Cham pushed at his shoulders. The flame of his candle burned violet, unflickering, unnatural.

Assured of the depth of Thom's trance, there was no question of waking him. No amount of smelling salts or cold water would answer for that. It would have to be done with care, and it would require magic. Si-Cham was a Master of the craft and it was of no moment to attempt this, but he instinctively felt it would be better to proceed with great caution. After all, Mohr would have already attempted this and would not have come for him if it could be easily done. So he positioned himself behind Thom's stool, raised his hands even with Thom's temples, and cupped them gently with his wizened fingers. He turned his own eyes to Thom's candle, and let his Gift trickle into it, til the flame yellowed again, crystaline as it coloured with Si-Cham's magic.

_Gold mail gleams against the dark. Her hair shines equally bright, bright as the torch in her hand as she descends the stairs. The crystal in the hilt of her sword gleams at her hip, but brightest of all is the jewel in her hand. No larger than her palm, it absorbs all the light and refracts it back threefold in fractured beams. The jewel is--_

Thom sensed him, then. The startlement, the wild fear, began to break the moment. If he woke now, Thom would go into shock. Si-Cham expended the smallest bit more of his magic, exerting calm. 'Follow it, Thom,' he murmured. 'Don't fight the vision. But you must find its natural end.'

_The jewel is so much the centre of it all that he only slowly realises where she is. Though he's never seen it before, he's read of such things; these are catacombs. The walls lining her path aren't round stones, but skulls, grey with dusty age, packed dozens deep. The bones close in behind her as she approaches the tomb. When she halts, it trembles. She raises the jewel, and the uncarved marble lid cracks straight down the middle, the broken halves falling aside. She raises the jewel, face serene, and from within the tomb he obeys her summons._

'Now, Thom,' Si-Cham murmured. He massaged gently at Thom's temples, rubbing soothing circles. 'Let it go. You have seen all you can see.'

Thom shivered. There was sweat in his hair, slick on his forehead when Si-Cham brushed at ginger fringe. 'Now,' Si-Cham commanded, redoubling the order with the force of his Gift. 'Obey me, Thom.'

And Thom did. The trance crumbled, the dream wrenched assunder. Thom gasped as if just remembering how to breathe, reared from his stool and fell on trembling legs. Si-Cham crouched over him, Mohr rushing to cushion him with a pillow. Pellerin came with a quilt, wrapping the boy tight as swaddling and providing the comfort of his own arms. Thom's shaking was slow to subside, eyes squeezed tightly shut now but streaming weak tears.

'Here,' Mohr said, a horn cup of wine heated over the fire. Si-Cham held it to the boy's lips, small sips that stained his lips red and dripped into the hem of the blanket til Thom could control his own hand and steady it. His skin was like ice, Si-Cham felt.

'My quarters,' Mohr said. 'Pellerin, heat bricks. We must keep him warm.' Between he and Si-Cham, they lifted the boy, and carried him past the wooden screen to the monk's cell behind. They laid the boy on the pallet in the corner. The apprentice hurried in with linen-wrapped stones that glowed with his own rose-coloured Gift, and they packed them tight around Thom, burying him beneath layers and sealing the warmth with magic. Soon enough Thom's teeth ceased to chatter, the blueish tinge of his lips fading.

'Go to your own repast,' Si-Cham said at last. 'You did well, coming for me. I'll stay with him, if I may, Instructor.'

'Of course, Master.' Mohr gestured sharply to his apprentice. 'Bring the Master his luncheon here.'

'No, I'll be fine for a few hours yet. Silence and rest is all that is needed here.' Si-Cham did not even trouble himself with the solitary chair, but lowered himself to the stone floor. Mohr, appalled, tried to provide him with a folded cloak, but Si-Cham waved him off. 'You will have your privacy before nightfall,' Si-Cham said, 'I'm sure of that. See, he already sleeps.'

That was not entirely true. Thom's bruised eyelids fluttered, the whites showing below. His breathing was shallow, rapid, and his hands clenched repeatedly. Under magical suggestion he should not have resisted so strongly. When they were alone, Si-Cham plied him again with wine, and sat petting his tangled hair, always urging him under again when he started or sat up.

But at last, with darkness falling early as it did in the mountains, and the sound of chanting from the chapel at the Tower a distant dull hum, Si-Cham allowed him to wake. The process was reassuringly slow, Thom's brow cool but not cold beneath his palm, and when he dragged a finger over his eyes like a small child with a little moue of weariness, Si-Cham only smiled with relief.

A violet gaze met his. Thom inhaled, and croaked, 'Master,' and began to cough.

Si-Cham gave him the last of the wine. 'Be at ease,' he comforted the boy. 'You are well and safe.'

'What happened?' Aware now, Thom threw off his blankets, kicking out a long leg and throwing a hand to the brick. His confusion was momentary, his senses swift to return, all good signs. When he blinked at Si-Cham again, he was ready.

So Si-Cham asked him directly. 'Your vision,' he said.

Thom said, 'She brought him back,' and his mouth pressed tight, thin and pale. 'She brings him back,' he said again, and then, 'Gods help us all.'

 

**

 

Thom of Trebond went missing the next day.

It was Pellerin, the apprentice, who brought Si-Cham the news. Si-Cham had slept late, as he often did these days. He was, he reflected more and more often, no long merely _venerable_ , no longer only _elder_. The number of years left to him were now rather smaller than the number of years he'd lived, even the number of years he'd been Master at the City of the Gods. His hands were knotted and claw-like, his head bald not because he shaved it but because his hair found it inhospitable territory. His joints ached in the cold-- and it was always cold in the Mountains-- but worst of all was the never-ended weariness. His eyes drooped at prayers, he napped more often than he meditated, but he could no longer find peace for a full night in his bed, no matter how soft the mattress, how still the silence. He was old, and so he spent the nights alone pondering old memories, old friends, old joys he would never know again, and woke disorientated, ill-rested, petulant.

When Pellerin brought him the news, Si-Cham snappishly wondered aloud why all disasters were _his_ responsibility, and could not the watch be called out without Si-Cham's direct order? But his irritation shamed him, and he soothed Pellerin with gratitude for minding his opinion, and no, the watch should not be called out. Thom was a boy, unfathomably young as all his students seemed to him these days. Thom would reappear when he was hungry, and as all boys were always hungry, it wouldn't be long.

But it was.

Si-Cham discreetly revoked his earlier order on the third day. The watch went out, and he spent the morning scrying for the missing boy. Wherever Thom was, it seemed he was sheltering himself well. Si-Cham consulted with the boy's instructors, who uniformly agreed Thom had neither the talent nor the brain to accomplish such a feat, especially against the combined Gifts of so many Masters. Si-Cham had little daily contact with the students, these days, but the fact remained that Thom was a student, and that should have answered for that.

Just when Si-Cham began to fear the worst and grimly readied himself to write a missive to the surviving family, Thom returned. When probed for answers-- he'd been gone five days by then-- Thom spoke vaguely of a cave just beyond the Pass. When pressed for details of what he'd done in said cave, he brushed them off, devoured a bowl of soup and a fresh breadroll, and went to bed.

'Like glass,' Mohr said, disgusted. 'I probed him most closely, Master. We all did. Nothing in there but stupid. He probably walked out the gate and forgot the way home.'

'He's very Gifted,' Pellerin protested. 'A vision of that depth--'

'A dog's bite can be deadly, but no one suspects the dog of brilliance.'

Si-Cham was unconvinced. But the problem of Thom of Trebond seemed to have run out of twists, so he declared it settled, took a tonic, and went to bed himself.

 

**

 

Strong magic was not an unusual occurrence in the City of the Gods. Not all Gifted students were of equal talent, nor the monks and even the instructors; but Si-Cham, Master of the Mithran Light, knew by feel the signature of each mage under his command. Having spent a day in such close proximity to Thom of Trebond, he knew the moment it began who it was, and he knew what Thom was doing. It was a Word of Power, and Thom of Trebond should neither know it nor be able to cast it.

For the second time in a week Si-Cham went running. His knees knocked uncertainly on the bowed old stairs, and he had to pause for breath twice, but once again he crossed the length of the School at a speed which taxed his tired limbs and was met by the worried faces of his staff, the babbling excitement of his students, all spilled out into the corridors in shock and curiosity.

'Away with you,' he ordered all of them brusquely, and the young and old alike quailed before his unusual temper. Where he passed doors shut hurriedly, timid yelps disappearing into chastened silence. Si-Cham was alone as he crossed the dormitory, which still whirled and buzzed like grating stone against his inner senses, the aftershock of the small magical quake burning in the air.

Si-Cham touched the hasp and found it latched. He did not wait on it. He pushed with his Gift, and the door swung wide.

Thom of Trebond was inside, not in his bed where Si-Cham had seen him last, but on his knees before the hearth, his hands outstretched to the flames, and the flames were a deep pure purple, like a sheet of shimmering glass for the vision he watched in its mirror.

Already he was pale as his linen nightdress, small veins visible beneath translucent skin. Si-Cham reached for him, determined to end it and save the boy's ignorant life. But his fingers met a solid shield of immovable air. He battered it with magic; he cast a spell, he cast a spell Thom could not have known, could not have defended, and felt his Gift dissipate harmlessly into the night air. It was cold as death, and soon so would Thom be, if it could not be ended. The purple of the flames was so bright it hurt to look on. It was life-force, and it was nearing the point of no return.

Si-Cham took a very great risk, then. Had he thought, he might not have done, but there was no time to think and he only acted to save Thom. If he could not sever the spell, then he could redirect it. He drew all his own Gift into a ball of light in his hands, draining himself in a great and deadly rush, and he reached past Thom and he gave it to the fire.

The clap of thunder was surely not literal, but the blast of sheer concussive force was, and it seemed to come from the strange diaphonous form which stood, for just a moment, in the fire itself. Si-Cham was airborn and weightless. Then his back connected to the stone wall, and his head bounced on its relentless surface a moment later. He slumped and toppled forward, dazed. It hurt, but only distantly, and he did not protest the dizzying wave of hollow rushing wind that swept him to unconsciousness.

 

**

 

When he woke, it was Thom who stroked his brow, and they were alone as they had been before, and for a queasy strange moment Si-Cham wondered if he'd only dreamt it all.

'No,' Thom murmured. 'For that I am sorry. It was all quite real.'

Thom's rooms. Like many young nobles who came to study at the City, his rooms were well-appointed, a bolstered bed, thick woolen hangings to line the bare stone walls, a wooden desk to work at, a fine bronze lamp of expensive smokeless oil, a chest for his novitiate's robes and silver candlabra for his dark evenings. All were wrecked now. The lamp oil had spilled to the floor in a splash, the bed was cracked straight down the middle, rushes from the mattress ripped free. Fire had singed the hangings, still smouldering in a heap on the floor. The stones were blackened from the blast-- except in a small circle of space in which Si-Cham lay and Thom knelt beside him, hands limp in his lap now, and his drawn face nearly cadaverous with whiteness.

'You would bring the whole City down about our ears,' Si-Cham began.

'I think not,' Thom replied. 'The only danger was to myself. Excepting the room,' he added, glancing about idly. 'Trebond will, of course, pay for the damage.'

'In the name of the holies.' Si-Cham struggled to rise. Thom aided him. He ached dully, especially the head and shoulders from his impact to the wall, but he was, he discovered, otherwise unhurt, and even that was superficial. 'What did you do, Thom?'

'It's the jewel,' Thom said. Abstracted, his pale eyes fixed on some point beyond his Master, he said, 'It must be the jewel, it's the key to all this. The jewel is the immutable. But if I can't change the jewel, maybe I can change the rest of it. I just need to... I just need to _divert_ it.'

'This is about your vision?' Si-Cham clung to the listing bedpost. 'On whom did you call, Thom? Who was the figure in the fire?'

'Figure in the fire?' Thom looked up, momentarily focussed. 'I Saw no figure. Just now? Which of them was it? The Huntress? The Black God?'

Si-Cham stared in awe. 'What have you unleashed on us, boy?'

'She brings him back.' Thom discovered the soot on his hands; he brushed them uselessly on his gown, streaking it. 'The compulsion comes from the jewel. The jewel comes from... the jewel is the key. In every possible future, it's the jewel. I can't prevent that, but I can prevent what comes if the jewel is used to raise him. It's too powerful, it erases all ties... it needs human magic. Human flaws. And the Gods will let it happen. They let it happen, every possibility...'

'You could have died, Thom! You would have been far worse than dead!'

'I think not.' Thom cocked his head. 'I suppose your concern does seem warranted, for what you know. That fault lies with me.' He closed his eyes, head dropping to his chest. He began to laugh, a hoarse bark that faded swiftly. 'I can't yet explain why, can I? Gods, to know what's coming and I _can do nothing til it's time_. What's the point...' He shook his head, and Si-Cham stared at him in silence.

Some time later, Thom spoke again in a little voice, only barely loud enough to reach Si-Cham's ears. 'You have my word there were reasons,' he said. 'What I have learnt this night changes things, I think. Yes. I suppose it does. Whatever punishment you see fit for this mess, I'm sure, but when we've done arguing I think it best we proceed with all possible haste. I'll put in my application for Mastery tomorrow morning. I trust you will not prevent me.'

Si-Cham refused to gape. He did not laugh. He did not disbelieve-- he couldn't. He reached for his Gift, and found it whole, untapped as if he had never tried to save this infuriating child's life. Perhaps even a smallest bit stronger than before he'd tried it. He turned away, gathering not calm, for he could not be calm, not now, but at least the appearance of it. He had never felt so ancient and so mortally inadequate as he did in that moment.

'Clean this,' he rasped, and he turned his back on Thom of Trebond and left with a heavy heart.


End file.
